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Last post Author Topic: Directory Opus 9  (Read 185651 times)

patteo

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Re: Directory Opus 9
« Reply #50 on: April 14, 2007, 08:29 PM »
Also, make no mistake about it, DonationCoder talked me into Directory Opus. There's no way I would have bought DO without DC. I hope GPsoft takes this into account and gives us another nice discount!

I agree. Without Donationcoder, I wouldn't even have tried DOpus.

I'm (actually was) a Norton Commander addict. Goes back to don't know when and I was so used to the many shorcuts F5, F6, F8, Alt commands etc and each time I tried to switch to some of the many other Two-Pane File Managers, each time, I found myself fumbling over their "new" routine commands. It was these routine commands that were so hard for me to get over simply because they were second nature to me as you tend to use them so often.

This issue seriously stumbled me and prevented me from exploring the many other useful features (no doubt) that other two pane file managers had.

I had come across DOpus somewhere along the way. But perhaps the price did look intimidating to me compared to the "rest". And I never got beyond that initially.

But in hindsight, it's the question of my initial perceived value (that's really a marketing issue DOpus has to deal with for people like me who started off using other File Managers).

But I only become a convert after reading through the Donationcoder forum and having used it for several months now, I will say that one of the best things about DOpus is the tremendous customizability.

But what good is this if you cannot figure it out and this is where the http://resource.dopus.com/ forum comes in.

There were quite a few times when I could not figure out how to do something, a quick search there would give me the answer or a question posted there would give me an answer by one of the expert residents in minutes if not hours. There are very responsive and come out with the right answers as well.

This allowed me to overcome my "second nature" problem. I simply duplicated the Norton Commander command set in DOpus (simply by reading their forums and posting questions there and Nudel was one of those who replied amongst many others including the author of DOpus).

After that I was off to explore all the other many useful features, such as those that allowed me to integrate DOpus with say Beyond Compare, Double Killer or any programs that accepted command line arguments).


Please note I post there under a different Forum name.
« Last Edit: April 14, 2007, 08:39 PM by patteo »

Darwin

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Re: Directory Opus 9
« Reply #51 on: April 15, 2007, 12:17 AM »
Quote from: Darwin
it is not as svelte and quick as XYplorer
What sort of stuff do you find slow in Opus? I would think most operations are bounded by how fast the filesystem can supply directory listings. You can slow things down by turning on certain options, though, so maybe that's what you're seeing? Or maybe there's something none of us have noticed that could do with fixing/improving. Let me or GPSoft know and I'll pass it on.
 :'(

DOpus is 12.4MB on disk while XYplorer is 2.37MB. Running both side by side with each open to the same folder, DOpus oscillates between 0 and 24% of my CPU, uses 7,592K RAM and 29,940K VM while XYPlorer is stable at 0% CPU, 22,344K RAM and 14,348K VM... So, all I can do is eat crow. My gut reaction to your question, Leo, before running the quick and dirty test just described, was "What was I thinking about when I wrote that DOpus isn't as quick as XYPlorer?" All I could think of, again prior to testing this, was that I must have been referring to size - XYPlorer is a lot smaller (but it does a lot less, too). Going and comparing the two, though reveals that, given its power, DOpus is tiny and that it's very economical with my system resources as well. XYPlorer IS smaller than DOpus and uses significantly less VM, but so what? I have a gig of RAM and a 120 GB harddrive. Further, the thumbdrive that I am quite anxious to install DOpus on is 2GB in size and I'm only using about 300MB of it currently... I'm not trying to disparage XYPlorer here. I bought it expressly to run from my thumbdrive so that I don't have to tolerate trying to work on other peoples' computers while shackled by Windows Explorer. When I did this, there was no reliable way to run DOpus from a thumbdrive (though there are several threads on their forum that describe how to do this, and which include some helpful comments from the developers). I have no regrets about doing this but I AM looking forward to running DOpus from a thumbdrive as I have found myself missing the absence of dual-pane viewing in XYplorer. As stated above, I will continue to follow XYploer's development and will keep it loaded.

Somewhat tangetially, the only thing I find slow in DOpus 8 is displaying my favorites menu on one of my three computers. I've no idea why this is so, and it persists even after paring the list down to two and disabling smart favorites. It works fine on my very old P-IIIE notebook and on my wife's notebook (which is a couple of years newer than the affected computer).

I'd like some brown sauce with my crow, please, and a pint. This is what I get for shooting from the hip. Sorry, I shouldn't talk with my mouth full  :-[

Hirudin

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Re: Directory Opus 9
« Reply #52 on: April 15, 2007, 07:27 AM »
After reading about RAM usage and stuff I figured... what the heck, I'll check what DO is using on my computer right now... I should note that I don't have any windows open, it's just running in the background.

Hmmm... after looking a little more, it seems that Process Explorer and Windows Task Manager have different ideas of how much ram it's using...
Screenshot - 4_15_2007 , 6_36_49 AM.png
« Last Edit: April 15, 2007, 07:43 AM by Hirudin »

Darwin

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Re: Directory Opus 9
« Reply #53 on: April 15, 2007, 08:25 AM »
Just to clarify - "VM" in my post above is Virtual Memory as read in Task Manager and, as far as I've ever been able to determine, corresponds to Process Explorer's "Private Bytes". Anytime I've ever compared what the two are reporting, TM's VM and PE's PB have been the same.

Nudel

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Re: Directory Opus 9
« Reply #54 on: April 15, 2007, 10:56 AM »
Thanks for the comments. Wow mouser, your post count is bigger than mine is on the Opus forums. :)

Fair points about the pricing etc. I'm not an economist or businessman so I don't know what the right answer is (if there is one!). I agree that price, and things like optional extras and free-update windows, have a psychological effect that can outweigh or pre-empt other factors.

If you use even a small percentage of its features then I think Opus is more than worth the price but it can be difficult to know how much you'll get out of a program before you use it and if you're put off by the price so much that you don't even test-drive the 60-day trial then you'll never find out. Even if the price of something is completely fair for what you get, if people don't try it then they won't realise how much value they'd get for their money.

It's a balancing act of pricing and of marketing/promotion. It's really difficult to explain what Opus does and what makes it special. It's the the sum of lots and lots of small things that don't matter much on their own.

KenR and patteo both said it well. The massive bullet point is configurability and that's hard to explain (if it's even a word :)). I could say to someone, "Opus is great because it allowed me to create a button that runs a tool that embeds folder.jpg from the same folder into the WMA files I had selected", and they'd probably think, "WMA album covers? I don't care about that, it's not worth the money!" The point isn't that it could do that particular thing but that it allowed me to do what I wanted and will probably allow them to do what they want, whatever that is.

The difficulties I had explaining the benefits of Opus prompted me to write my introduction to Opus a while back. I wanted to list out some of "the little things that add up to something big" and to give a few examples of what I made Opus do for myself in the hope it would help people understand what Opus can do for them. I don't know how successful I was but at least now I can paste the URL into conversations instead of fumbling with words. :)

Many people don't seem to "get" configurability. They see a screenshot of a program and think that's it. "It's got too many buttons." But you can remove them. "That cat picture (at the bottom of the first page) is ridiculous!" I know, it's meant to be!

It seems to me that most people, at least on Windows, are used to letting the tools they use dictate how they get things done. Most programs aren't very configurable so people aren't used to saying "F*** this, I'm sick of seeing this dialog all the time!" or "I do this thing every day and it takes five mouse clicks, why can't I do it in one click or via a hotkey?" or "Why are all these stupid programs that I never use on my context menus in the way of the things I do use?"

Opus is the kind of program that you can adapt to solve problems like that but I don't think many people realise problems like that are there. They accept "it's how things work" and don't wish they could change things, so when the odd program like Opus comes along they don't see how it's useful. Opus lets you customise just about everything to your personal needs and that requires something that I don't think people are used to using: imagination about how they could use their computer better. Of course, it also requires the investment of time and energy towards tweaking things but if you're a geek like me then that's often a pleasure in itself. (I seem to spend half my time tweaking my computer so it's easier to tweak my computer. :))

Comparing the two is like debating whether or not chocolate or vanilla ice cream is better.  They're both delicious.
Well said!

I guess the only other thing I can ask for is maybe GP can give an *extra* discount for Donationcoder users for the upgrade?
-superboyac
I hope GPsoft takes this into account and gives us another nice discount!
-Hirudin
I don't know what GPSoft's plans are but I'll mention it to them.

if I have to install 8 to make 9 work
-Hirudin
You won't have to install Opus 8 first. You'll get a new licence code that unlocks Opus 9 directly. At least, that's how it worked from 6 to 8.

Don't worry, I would go on strike and post the longest whine in the history of the Internet if GPSoftware ever made the update/install process force you to install the previous version in order to install the update.

(Installing CyberLink PowerDVD, for example, drives me f***ing nuts. Every time I reinstall Windows or switch PCs I have to faff about installing the first version of PowerDVD I ever bought and then installing every update since then in sequence, each with a different licence code, because the PowerDVD installers refuse to install with an update licence code unless they can see the previous version, even though the installer contains the full set of program files. It's so painfully stupid. I could understand them asking me to type in my old licence code to prove I'm entitled to an update (although didn't I do that on their website in order to get the update code?!) but actually having to install the old versions, one by one? WTF. It'll never happen with Opus. Not on my watch!)

How are the upgrades going to work? More or less we'll get a new key and the old key will no longer work, right?
-Hirudin
Technically, if you buy an update to Opus 9 then, as far as I know, your old Opus 8 key will continue to work with Opus 8. Of course, legally, you wouldn't be allowed to have Opus 8 installed on one machine and Opus 9 on another using the two licences (unless you had a two-machine licence) since you've bought an update and not a second copy. But if you needed to go back to Opus 8 for some reason then I don't think anything would stop you doing that.

About the whole "Bread Crumb" thing... yeah, I thought it looked like MS stole that feature from DO, and improved it.
-Hirudin
On a slightly related note, it's great to see that Explorer in Vista selects the filename, minus the extension part, when you press F2 to rename something. Just like Opus always did (by default). I don't know if MS got the idea from Opus and I don't really care; I'm just glad they added it to Explorer so I don't get irritated every time I rename a file on my Desktop!

Btw, it's really not neccessary to register again just to support me! You should better spend this money to support the victims of the Tsunami flood, or the hunger in Africa...
-Ghisler
Respect to that. Every so often the mIRC guy donates a month's registrations to charity, too. He's donated a fair amount. It surprised me how much actually. Something like $30,000 for a month of registrations which is a lot of people buying mIRC, but I guess a lot of people use mIRC and at least some of those registrations will be people who are buying it again just to donate.

I just want to uppercut every time I see that. (I hope this refrence isn't lost on everyone here!)
-Hirudin
Is that a Mortal Kombat reference? That had a face that appeared on the screen sometimes, right? I'm rubbish at those Beat 'Em Ups, pretty much anything post-IK+, where the control systems turned into a case of weird input sequences that you had to work out and memorise. I managed to get to grips with Ninja Gaiden (the newer Xbox one) and God of War but the one-on-one two-player games make me throw the controller at the wall in frustration. Actually, Ninja Gaiden did too at first, but that game really rewards perseverance!

Your reference probably had nothing to do with beat 'em ups and now I've started a weird tangent, haha.

Actually, XY is now taking me 16mb of mem, thus, if it'd behave in my computer as it does in yours, you're right, DOpus would take less.
-jgpavia
Probably not less, to be fair to XY, but a similar amount. Coincidentally, as I type this my Opus is using just under 16MB (15,692K) as well. Depends what I'm doing, of course, as it would in XY too.

I'd like some brown sauce with my crow, please, and a pint.
-Darwin
:-) Thanks for taking the time to compare the two. I'm not sure where the impression that Opus uses lots of memory and/or is slow comes from but it's one of those things that people seem to think and repeat without really checking it out. When examined it doesn't turn out to be true. If Opus is using a lot of memory or running slowly then it's probably because of a 3rd party thing that Opus is hooking into.

For example, Opus relies on the video codecs installed on the computer to make thumbnails of movies and to get information out of them to display in its columns (e.g. dimensions and length of time). Unfortunately, a lot of video codecs are full of bugs for some reason. (Dunno what it is about people who write video codecs!) If a codec goes into a 100% CPU loop or leaks memory all over the place then it's dopus.exe that gets the blame in Task Manager since the codec DLL is loaded into the Opus process. If you see that happen and don't know any better then it's easy to think Opus is buggy.

I think it's a lot like reports of Firefox being unstable. They usually turn out to be due to extensions, not the program itself. That's the risk of hooking into other people's components.

Another thing I remember is when someone posted some timings which appeared to show that Opus copied files significantly slower than Explorer. The timings sure looked bad but after some investigation Opus was exonerated. It turned out to be two things:

First, the tester was copying thousands of small files and in Opus the options to preserve timestamps and attributes when copying files were turned on. Explorer doesn't preserve those things (or maybe it does one but not the other? I'm not sure right now) but Opus does, by default, since it's nice to do so and it normally takes a negligible amount of time (i.e. milliseconds). When copying a huge number of small files, though, that per-file overhead adds up and takes up as much time as copying the files themselves. It didn't add up to a hell of a lot, as I remember, but it still made Opus appear to be slower than Explorer, which was bad. I turned off two checkboxes and the time to copy the same files in Opus and Explorer became so close that I couldn't call a winner. (The time fluctuates, of course, but I did several copies and averaged the results.)

Second, and much more importantly, the person who did the original timings hadn't done a fair test at all. They copied the files in Opus and then copied the same files in Explorer without doing anything in between. Since the filesystem caches data Explorer had a massive advantage since Opus, before it, had caused all the files to be cached. Opus was reading files from disk while Explorer was reading them straight out of RAM. Test the two in the opposite order and Opus appeared much faster than Explorer. By doing a fair test, where I made sure the filesystem cache was filled with other data between copies, I found that the two programs were really the same speed.

Doing all those tests, copying files over and over again with different combinations of options, was really tedious but I wanted to work out if the results the user posted were valid. If they were then I'm sure GPSoft would have fixed the problem but, happily, it turned out there was no problem to fix.

MrCrispy

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Re: Directory Opus 9
« Reply #55 on: April 15, 2007, 04:32 PM »
Nudel, based on your guide to the new features in v9 and your post here, I've also decided to purchase DO when it comes out. It helps that I'll be moving to Vista at about the same time on my home pc. I know I should post questions about the program on your forums, but I'm being lazy and its easier to ask an expert :). Maybe it will help other users here as well. I have one very simple query - is it possible to make DO behave like xplorer2? By that I mean -

- have double click to select a file in the program even though Explorer has single click
- use the standard 'Commander' keys found in many dual pane managers - such as F5 (copy), F6 (move) etc
- have left/right/tab move between the 2 panes
- Ctrl+Shift+<Drive> goes to that drive

These are the commands I'm used to, and they make a lot of sense. Over time, I want to learn more Opus specific features and use them, but in the meantime I want something familiar which doesn't disrupt my work too much. I have a trial version of DO8 and I haven't been able to get it to do these things.

Nudel

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Re: Directory Opus 9
« Reply #56 on: April 15, 2007, 04:52 PM »
- have double click to select a file in the program even though Explorer has single click
Do you mean to launch a file, rather than to select one? If so then yes, to a degree. Opus ignores Explorer's "single-click" mode, but does have its own option if you want "single-click to select" inside of Opus. So you could turn single-click on in Explorer and leave it off in Opus. (It's off by default in Opus.)

The only problem will be when Opus is displaying a folder via one of Explorer's views. (Opus relies on Explorer to display My Computer, Recycle Bin, Network Places, and similar folders. They are displayed within an Opus window, but Explorer is doing the work behind the scenes.) In those cases I think Explorer's settings will be respected, so things will be inconsistent if Explorer and Opus aren't configured the same way.

- use the standard 'Commander' keys found in many dual pane managers - such as F5 (copy), F6 (move) etc
That's easily done. You can create standalone hotkeys via Settings -> Customize -> Keys. You can also assign hotkeys to toolbar buttons by editing the buttons. (Toolbar buttons' hotkeys will also be listed in the Customize Keys dialog.)

Tip: If you try creating some hotkeys in Opus 8, make sure you uncheck the System-Wide Hotkey option, else the hotkey will function even when Opus isn't the active program. (That's useful for certain things but you wouldn't want it for stuff like Copy and Rename for obvious reasons.) The System-Wide Hotkey option is turned on by default for new hotkeys in Opus 8. Opus 9 turns it off by default since it kept confusing people. ("Why does Opus start doing stuff when I press a hotkey in another program!?")

- have left/right/tab move between the 2 panes
Do you mean you want to be able to move folder tabs from the left to the right and vice versa? If so you can do that by dragging them. (Drag the tab's icon, not the label. The icon represents the tab while the label represents the folder, and dragging that would be like dragging the folder to another location. Similarly, right-clicking the label and the icon give you different context menus.)

- Ctrl+Shift+<Drive> goes to that drive
Easily done through Customize Keys and commands like "Go C:\". You'd have to create a separate hotkey for each drive letter but it's a one-off job and hopefully not too much hassle (unless you've got 26 drive letters).

Over time, I want to learn more Opus specific features and use them, but in the meantime I want something familiar which doesn't disrupt my work too much.
Perfectly reasonable! Change Opus's configuration for yourself, not the other way around.

jdd

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Re: Directory Opus 9
« Reply #57 on: April 15, 2007, 05:34 PM »
You can add me to the long list of DO users that first learned about it on DC.

I'm not sure whether I'd prefer a special DC discount for the upgrade, or a 7-zip plug-in....Hmmmmm.  Scratch that, I would definitely prefer the 7-zip plug-in which has been talked about on the DO forum for a long time but never seems to go anywhwere.

Nudel

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Re: Directory Opus 9
« Reply #58 on: April 15, 2007, 05:43 PM »
Scratch that, I would definitely prefer the 7-zip plug-in which has been talked about on the DO forum for a long time but never seems to go anywhwere.
I'm not sure what's going on with Nosh's 7-zip plugin. I think maybe somebody else had also started on one?

I'm in the process of arranging to take a sabbatical from my day job for a few months, during which I plan to do a lot of Opus plugin work because it's been bugging me that I haven't been able to add certain features to my existing plugins and that there still aren't plugins for certain things. (Multi-page TIFF for example. I've done a bunch of work towards that already but there's only so much coding I can get done at the weekends.)

If nobody has finished a 7-zip plugin by then then I'll make one. The 7-zip API looks pretty simple so it won't be hard.

I also wish Opus had a read-write RAR plugin, instead of the read-only one it has currently. Seems to me the only way to do this, since there is no read-write RAR API/DLL for whatever reason (sigh!), is to call rar.exe or winrar.exe from the command line, which is a PITA but seems to work for Total Commander and others. I wasn't sure how well that would work with unicode filenames, though. Haven't really looked into it enough.

zridling

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Re: Directory Opus 9
« Reply #59 on: April 16, 2007, 05:54 AM »
Nudel, thanks for the great features page for DOpus 9. We're all grateful. It's almost 6a and I don't have the energy to respond to every point, but as I was going down the list of new DOpus features in version 9, I noticed that most of them were already part of XYplorer 5.x. As for speed, file operations are noticeably slower in DOpus than XYplorer, on both XP and Vista. Dual panes are overrated as with tabs, catalog, or a variety of keyboard shortcuts, I can switch among drives and locations in XYplorer within one click or hotkey. While both programs are highly customizable, XYplorer's UI is more so, and can be configured to look and work just about anyway you can imagine. Anyone claiming a "lot of bugs" in XYplorer doesn't use the program full-time as it's one of the tightest jobs of coding I know of, comparable to Nick Bradbury's FeedDemon RSS reader. XYplorer's dev doesn't merely fix bugs, he's constantly adding new features and tweaks, on a weekly basis.

I use and have registered both, but the biggest criticism I have against Directory Opus is its exhorbitant price and upgrade costs. Similarly, the biggest criticism I've had with XYplorer is its lack of customizable keyboard shortcuts, but that's no longer true with XYplorer's latest beta. A major plus is that XYplorer offers a true Lifetime license; Directory Opus does not. With XYplorer you always know where the program is headed, and hey, even XYplorer's dev, Donald Lessau, responded here! But if high price is the only real gripe against a program, then that doesn't take anything away from its quality, which Directory Opus has in abundance.

It's just that GPSoft is going to keep coming back for more money on a regular basis, and I don't feel they offer a substantial enough discount to registered users. On the other hand, XYplorer doesn't ask for a dime after the initial registration (although I find it really cool that XYplorer retains a small donation link on its site for anyone wanting to contribute beyond the cost of the $30 license). Ironically, I'm more than willing to consistently donate to a vendor who offers me a [true] Lifetime license than to continue buying high-priced upgrades. I've sent far more money in donations to open source apps, freeware, and to a lesser extent, XYplorer, than I ever will spend on upgrades for costly upgrades. It's just how I show my gratitude for being appreciated and trusted as a customer. Goodwill can go a lot further in the long run than a few dollars, and XYplorer is in for the long-tailed long haul.

(Comments are re-enabled on my blog. I apologize. I was getting so many porn/spam comments that I shut it down for a long time and forgot to turn them back on. Just deleted over 9,000 this week alone!)

Once again, thanks Nudel, I appreciate your feedback here and all the hard work you did on your site — you do a great service to Directory Opus! I too, am a tweak-freak and share your compulsion.
« Last Edit: April 16, 2007, 06:13 AM by zridling »

Nudel

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Re: Directory Opus 9
« Reply #60 on: April 16, 2007, 06:21 AM »
Thanks for the reply. I guess we've both said all there is to say really.

Paying USD $16 a year (i.e. USD $40 every 2.5 years) for keeping a useful tool up-to-date with new features doesn't seem expensive to me, but maybe I'm rich or something. :-) (Of course, it's not as cheap as paying nothing; it just doesn't strike me as expensive.)

Comment spam is such a pain so I understand you disabling them. We had a lot of issues on the Opus forums until Steve installed a bunch of things that seem to have stopped them for now. Spam is bad enough but spam with explicit pictures that could get someone fired for reading an innocent site just isn't funny.

Nomadin

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Re: Directory Opus 9
« Reply #61 on: April 16, 2007, 06:33 AM »
It's just that GPSoft is going to keep coming back for more money on a regular basis, and I don't feel they offer a substantial enough discount to registered users.

I guess this is my biggest issue with DO.  I think that your registered users should get a bigger break.  They (registered users) are often your lifeblood for new sales.  I have convinced many people to buy the programs that I use by showing them how much time it can save or how it can improve their computing experience.

I registered DO8, tweaked it in a way that almost worked for me, and used it for a while.  My config actually mapped most of the NC or TC key strokes since that is my frame of reference.  Unfortunately, I could never get everything to work from the keyboard the way I wanted.  The tab functionality seemed really odd coming from a Commander frame of reference.  It also seemed like the listers lost focus at times that I would not have expected.  (I rarely use the mouse when I am working on file management duties)

I will test DO9, since I like to test good programs, but I don't know that I can pay more than the price of XYPlorer or TC just for an upgrade.  In fact, I might just register XYplorer to support its development.

BTW, I still use Total Commander (registered many years ago), but I keep an eye on xplorer2 (registered), Salamander (registered), DO (8 registered), and XYplorer.


Nudel

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Re: Directory Opus 9
« Reply #62 on: April 16, 2007, 07:19 AM »
My brief impressions of TC, and some of the odd feature requests from ex-TC users about what they'd like the mouse buttons to do in Opus, is that moving from it to any other program would be a bit weird in a few ways. Or maybe that's just a configuration thing (i.e. it allows you to make it weird but it also has the option of working the way most other Windows apps do) in which case that's fair enough.

Right, I've gotta get out of the house to go buy the new NIИ album that came out today (tomorrow in the USA) for £12. Despite buying his last five albums and turning a few dozen people on to his music, I don't get a free copy :(.
« Last Edit: April 16, 2007, 07:22 AM by Nudel »

Darwin

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Re: Directory Opus 9
« Reply #63 on: April 16, 2007, 07:59 AM »
Right, I've gotta get out of the house to go buy the new NIИ album that came out today (tomorrow in the USA) for £12. Despite buying his last five albums and turning a few dozen people on to his music, I don't get a free copy .

Cheeky monkey  ;D

urlwolf

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Re: Directory Opus 9
« Reply #64 on: April 16, 2007, 10:03 AM »
Does anyone know if XYplorer can have a source code viewer with syntax highlighting like dopus (i.e., in the bottom half of the screen?). I find that really useful.

DonL

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Re: Directory Opus 9
« Reply #65 on: April 16, 2007, 10:31 AM »
Does anyone know if XYplorer can have a source code viewer with syntax highlighting like dopus (i.e., in the bottom half of the screen?). I find that really useful.
Last time I checked it did not. ;)

I happily admit that there are one or two things that DOpus does and XY doesn't. And just like DOpus does not try to do everything that's possible (in XY), XY does not try to do everything that's possible (in DOpus). The power of a software (or any product) lies (also) in the difference from others. Clearly DOpus is in various ways bigger than XYplorer, and this size relation will stay like that very probably. If DOpus is Godzilla then XYplorer is T. Rex -- it always depends what suits you best for your current task. :)


superboyac

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Re: Directory Opus 9
« Reply #66 on: April 16, 2007, 11:52 AM »
My brief impressions of TC, and some of the odd feature requests from ex-TC users about what they'd like the mouse buttons to do in Opus, is that moving from it to any other program would be a bit weird in a few ways. Or maybe that's just a configuration thing (i.e. it allows you to make it weird but it also has the option of working the way most other Windows apps do) in which case that's fair enough.

Right, I've gotta get out of the house to go buy the new NIИ album that came out today (tomorrow in the USA) for £12. Despite buying his last five albums and turning a few dozen people on to his music, I don't get a free copy :(.


Hehe... :-[ that would be me.  I think that I'm the main one making the posts about what the button clicking should be like on the mouse.  I did a particularly detailed post on the DOpus forum just recently.  In my defense, it's not that I want the clicking to be like TC because I'm used to that.  On the contrary, I'm used to DOpus and haven't used TC for 2 years now.  But the mouse navigation on TC allowed faster navigation with fewer mistakes (as far as selecting things and drag & dropping).  It's very subtle.

Anyway, I suggested it and got an email confirmation back from the Dr., but I don't know if it is being seriously considered.

Darwin

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Re: Directory Opus 9
« Reply #67 on: April 21, 2007, 08:39 AM »
Are we there yet? Is it April 27th? Are we there yet? When will we get there? Is it April 27th yet...!?  :wallbash:

Jibz

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Re: Directory Opus 9
« Reply #68 on: April 21, 2007, 09:51 AM »
Right, I've gotta get out of the house to go buy the new NIИ album that came out today (tomorrow in the USA) for £12. Despite buying his last five albums and turning a few dozen people on to his music, I don't get a free copy :(.
-Nudel

Hope it's not just an update of the previous album with a couple of new chords here and there then ;).
« Last Edit: April 21, 2007, 09:53 AM by Jibz »

Nudel

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Re: Directory Opus 9
« Reply #69 on: April 21, 2007, 04:40 PM »
Hope it's not just an update of the previous album with a couple of new chords here and there then ;).
I bought all of his remix records, plus (two copies of) the remastered version of TDS, too. :-)

Innuendo

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Re: Directory Opus 9
« Reply #70 on: April 23, 2007, 10:10 AM »
When DC first offered Directory Opus with a 50% discount I was the first to warn that this product is very expensive when it comes to upgrade fees & the authors are very quick to take offense if anyone even begins to insinuate that they may be charging even a nickel too much for their program or its upgrades.

I won't fault Mr. Potter for his pricing tactics. The best way to become a success is to charge as much as the market will bear for your product & his market seems to be doing very well. It's just a little too expensive for my tastes is all. If he were head & shoulders above the competition it'd be an easier pill to swallow.

However, with viable (cheaper) alternatives out there such as Total Commander, Directory Opus becomes less of a must-have. If one works within archives a lot (7z, ARC, RAR, ISO, LHA, etc) then Total Commander totally obliterates Directory Opus. At least in that area anyway. Total Commander & Directory Opus have different design philosophies, though, so each has different sets of strengths and weaknesses.

For the money, dollar for dollar (or whatever your country's equivalent unit of measurement is) Total Commander is the better deal. For less than the cost of one version of Directory Opus, you get a lifetime license for Total Commander that entitles you to free upgrades forever. No one can say the author, Mr. Ghisler, is slacking off due to a lack of regular income, either. The new v7 that is in release candidate status right now is a hugely anticipated upgrade with tons of new features that has literally been years in the making. It, too, will be available free of charge to anyone who has ever bought a Total Commander license...even if you were one of the ones who bought a $10 v1 license way back in the day.

If one widens the scope from file managers, one could also look at the binary file usenet downloading program Newsbin Pro to see another very successful lifetime license story. Version 5 just came out a few months ago and it was totally rewritten from the ground up being optimized and tons of new features added. Again, this new version (and all future versions) are free to anyone who ever bought a Newsbin Pro license.

There are other examples, but I think my point has been made. Do not mistake this post as any indication I wish ill of Mr. Potter. Quite the contrary, I am one of his oldest fans. At the risk of making myself sound geezerly I'll say that I was a proud owner of Directory Opus v1 on the Amiga. Directory Opus was one of the best file managers on the Amiga & it is one of the best file managers on the PC.

Until the number of plugins reaches near the number that are available for Total Commander then Directory Opus is going to be extremely lacking in specific areas. I'm sure the plugins will come in time. Right now I'd settle for more archive file formats being supported.

Speaking of such, read-write capability for RAR files is something that just unfortunately is not going to happen for any file manager (at least not in a legal fashion). RAR's author/inventor will gladly license the read api, but staunchly refuses to let anyone besides himself market programs that can write RARs.

MrCrispy

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Re: Directory Opus 9
« Reply #71 on: April 23, 2007, 12:15 PM »
Why would someone want to create RAR files? In my experience the majority of rar archives come from p2p sources and its the preferred format of the 'scene', but you hardly ever see it for mainstream downloads. The savings over free formats like zip/7zip are far outweighed by the universal zip support built into nearly every OS and utility on the planet. I can safely send zip content to anyone and be sure they'll be able to open it. </end off tangent rant>

AbteriX

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Re: Directory Opus 9
« Reply #72 on: April 23, 2007, 01:20 PM »
Hi Leo,
may i ask you here a question instead of the DO Forum?

Related to this posts :
http://resource.dopu...dab6c1e65e2654#19878

[...]
* USB key export is a separate Licence and EACH physical key requires a separate export Licence at AUD$10 each.

If you lose you USB key you will need to write us a pleading letter:)
-greg GPSoftware

> If I upgrade my USB thumb drive from a 1gb to a 4gb [...], do I need to purchase a new USB license [...]
-djeaton3162


> in this case you can re-use your licence.
-greg GPSoftware


Now my question:
I don't understood > in this case you can re-use your licence.
So is this licence in any way ""hardware bundled"", i mean, can i us DOpus today on this USB device and tomorrow on an another...
.. or must i always eMail GPSoft to update the licence?

I think about buying DOpus but i use different USB-Sticks (some day an stick, but sometimes an little USB-Drive instead,... only used by me one after another)
Thank you if you can ask this for me.

.

---
Edit
FYI Leo,
Your link to the fully-featured text editor as seen at Getting to know Directory Opus is not valid any more.
Did you have an other link please?
« Last Edit: April 23, 2007, 03:06 PM by AbteriX »

Innuendo

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Re: Directory Opus 9
« Reply #73 on: April 24, 2007, 08:58 AM »
MrCrispy,
Sure the zip format is convenient and widespread, but the choice of archive format goes beyond just compression. While RAR offers modestly better compression than ZIP the main reason I use it is far superior error-correction and repair capabilities if somewhere down the line my archive has become corrupted.

My rule of thumb is for quick and dirty packaging and emailing something ZIP is fine, but if I want something to stay in an archive an extended amount of time on my hard drive then I use the far more robust RAR format. I have lost some archives over the years to the ZIP format so I shy away from using it for long-term storage.

Innuendo

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Re: Directory Opus 9
« Reply #74 on: April 24, 2007, 09:02 AM »
Abterix,
I think what the Directory Opus web site is telling you is that if you lose your serial number that unlocks USB functionality in the program, be prepared to beg the authors for it to be re-issued to you. (Which doesn't make sense to me. As long as you can prove you purchased it I don't see why you would have to 'beg' for something you legally own).

Now if you have USB functionality & you were using it on a 1GB usb drive and later decided to buy a new 4GB (or whatever) usb drive you are within your rights to transfer the program from the old usb drive to the new one without having to re-purchase anything.

I'm going to be watching DO9 closely. The USB functionality & the clever ways of getting around UAC are exciting features. I can't wait for the 27th.